INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Over a two month period I-Team 8 took hidden cameras into grocery stores and each time, within a matter of minutes, we found expired food being offered for sale on store shelves.

We found iced tea that was more than a month old, cheese that was a month past its expiration date. We also found kids’ pudding that was nearly a month over due, stocked front and center, clearly marked as perishable.

Even worse, we found egg whites on the shelf whose container was visibly bulging from what was happening inside. The package was a month past the sell by date.

We took our findings to Ed Culver, the Marion County Board of Health’s top inspector.

"Clearly if it is a bulging package, that's something you don't want to touch,” he said.

Culver and his team inspect about 900 groceries and drug stores that sell food in Marion County. He tells I-Team 8 they find violations in over half of their inspections. That’s not surprising based on what we found and by scouring the health department’s records.

We found everything from rat droppings to outdated baby formula and more in county records --each one a critical violation.

Culver says his team asks stores to take care of high risk or critical violations while the inspectors are in the store.

One example of high risk is food not hot or cold enough for several hours. But we wanted to know about items on shelves that you unknowingly buy, like the child’s smoothie you’re about to give a toddler who doesn’t know any better than to drink it.

“It might be a pretty disgusting product,” Culver says, but it “might make your nauseous but it may not have food borne pathogens.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, food borne pathogens are the bacteria or fungus that cause 1.4 million illnesses and hundreds of deaths every year. In Indiana and most states expiration dates aren't required, except for a federal law that covers baby food.

Our most shocking discovery was in the baby food aisle.
So, we took a trip down the baby aisle and almost immediately found old, outdated baby formula for sale.

In one case it was several months old but in another, the date read “October 1, 2008.”

We wanted to know who was responsible for outdated food on the shelves.

“The grocery store is definitely responsible for ensuring the product on the shelves is within the proper date guidelines and if its not they have a responsibility to get it off the shelf,” Culver said.

But, Culver says the store still stocking the baby formula that expired in 2008 wouldn’t be penalized on the first violation.

“If we find repeat violations we can issue citations,” he said. Stores are told to take outdated baby formula off the shelf and can be fined from $50 up to $500.

So while I-Team 8 found outdated food over and over food inspectors have one basic rule in the food business: When in doubt, throw it out.